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BMW Going Green (Barron’s)

Barron’s reports that BMW will soon reveal robust financial targets for the coming year. A factor that may help achieve them: BMW, of “ultimate driving machines” engineering fame, is going green.

In his 9/24/07 cover story “Green Machine,” Vito Racanelli writes:

Among German luxury-car producers, BMW is arguably the leader in clean-engine technology. This has come at a price, however, as high R&D costs, among other things, have hurt profit margins, even as BMW has become the globe’s leading premium-auto maker by unit sales.

BMWs are arguably efficient already, but that efficiency goes into performance. The car industry is responding to public concern over carbon emissions. Luxury cars are under heightened pressure, not because they spew more CO2 overall, but because they’re an easy target. They’re powerful, heavy, and emblematic of excess.

Luxury models from BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes, Porsche and Volkswagen’s Audi do emit more carbon per mile than do slower, smaller cars — but those mass-market cars represent many more units on the road, Racanelli points out, and therefore more carbon emissions overall. BMW apparently isn’t falling back on that defense.

If the company that “breathes life into your driving” isn’t committed to making us all breathe easier, new limits in Europe and California will force it to happen.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.